We had a pleasant 7 hour flight to Singapore on the new airbus A380 where we watched endless movies with endless drinks from Qantas. Once through the airport we had to negotiate the MTR (underground). After a mad dash around the airport to find an ATM we then found the notes were too large to buy a ticket which is only available from the machine. We persuaded a man at the ticket desk to give us some change and then jumped onto the train. As we got off the other end we heard rumbles of thunder and lightning and knew we had at least a 10 minute walk with our large backpacks to the hostel. We took a deep breath, nearly passed out from the humidity, and just made it to the hostel without being soaked. Welcome to Singapore!

After a rest we decided to explore Singapore and realised neither of us actually knew anything about it or what there is to see. We headed to the CBD for information and stumbled across a heritage trail. We walked round this (very very slowly in the ridiculous heat) passing Raffles Hotel and the former colonial buildings. We decided to brush up on Singapore history at the National Museum which turned out be excellent and happily spent hours wandering around in the large aircon building after relaxing with some english tea and cookies.

"Singapura" translates as the lion city and there have been people living here since 1330s. More recently in 1800s it was owned by the Dutch. However, a British gentleman named Raffles came to visit, rather liked it and stuck a British flag on it claiming we now owned it. As you can imagine the Dutch were not impressed which led to a long drawn out discussion by paper across Europe before eventually the Dutch surrendered Singapore to the British, which became a vital trading port in SE Asia. Singapore eventually became independent after the Second World War.

After our history lesson headed to a local Hawker stall where we had authentic Singapore noodles and dim sum polished off with beer. Unfortunately I (Brenda) have not mastered chopsticks and so it took me over an hour to eat them! We then headed to Boat Quay on the waterfront for a drink at the Penny Black pub.

One of the delights of Singapore is the national specialty of fish head curry. Imagine my delight when Dave suggested try this and then the receptionist also animatedly agreed to the point she wanted to join us. Well the aim of this trip was to travel, explore and do new things so off we went (even though most people know I really don't like fish especially fish heads!). We stopped off in Chinatown first and walked through the small streets of stalls and came across a food market. Dave was keen to explore to get some interesting photos so in we went - straight onto a busy, smelly, wet aisle of fishheads! As well as live frogs, fish and other fish bits. The smell was so bad I had to leave quickly before being sick leaving Dave happily snapping away at frogs. To recover we visited a local Buddhist temple which was spectacular, followed by coffee.

Next stop was Little India where we easily found the restaurant recommended to us. Obviously, what we really fancied whilst boiling hot and extremely sweaty was a hot curry but in we went anyway. We were certainly not alone, the place was packed with locals. We quickly ordered and along came our meal complete with rice, various veggie curry bits and chappatti. The large steaming bowl of fish head came our way with a large eye poking out of the curry soup. There was enough meat on one for both of us. The fish was actually fine but slightly bitter and the curry sauce thankfully not too spicy. Dave tried to go one step further than me. The locals feel that the best bit of all is the soft tissue behind the eyeball. So Dave carefully scooped it out and dissected the eyeball, lifted up his fork and then quickly changed his mind and put it back (chicken!). However we left very proud of ourselves but also ridiculously full and too hot, to the extent that we struggled to walk down the street. The only solution was to head back to the hostel and chill out on the rooftop terrace with a cool drink until the evening.

This was where we finally glammed up for the first time in 5 weeks and headed to Raffles Hotel. This is a famous hotel where many well-known writers and stars have sat in the Long bar drinking a Singapore Sling cocktail (created at the hotel). We were warned that there is a fussy dress code and so we half expected to be turned away. However a cheeky smile and hand-holding cute couple were allowed in to a full bar of foreigners all drinking bright pink cocktails with the floor covered in monkey nut shells. We were shown to our table where the waitress promptly dusted off the shells onto the floor (another custom of the long bar is to throw your used monkey nut shells onto the floor) and we ordered one Singapore sling between us with a slight look of "cheapskates" from the waitress. One alone cost us £14! We drank as slowly as we could, soaked up the atmosphere and Dave ate his body weight in monkey nuts (which were free). We left before being thrown out and then spent the evening strolling along the river in the cooler breeze along with most of Singapore.

The highlight was a visit to the merlion statue, a bizarre concoction of half lion, half mermaid, created by the Singapore tourist board as some sort of symbol of Singapore. For a country that has banned drugs it looks pretty weird. It was surrounded by a massive crowd taking photos from every angle so it seems to have worked. Oh well nothing for it but for us to jump in. We spent half an hour taking photos of ourselves and had other people take them of us before heading home for the night.

The next day we were ready to fly to Borneo for the next two weeks of our adventure.

Will we make it up Mt Kinabalu? Find out very soon.